By Mannu Shahi

Twenty-four of Nepal's biggest artists collaborate in the special lockdown version of Rato Ra Chandra Surya, as these musicians stuck in their homes contribute to the collaboration with whatever devices available during this period of lockdown.
Originally composed and co-sung by Ambar Gurung, written by Gopal Prasad Rimal and sung by Phatteman the patriotic reflection portrayed in this song makes it stand apart from other adhunik lok anthems and helps contextualizing this tune time and again in phases of crisis.
This may've been a reason why there are a lot of rearranged versions of this tune available in the market and as much as people have already demonstrated varieties of re-approaching the same motif, someone else manages to venture into a whole other dimension and re-present the track all over again.
From 1974 AD, Nepathaya to various instrumentals on guitars, flutes, sarangi, violin, piano and others to multi-star vocals share, harmonizing, vocal-reality-show renditions, tik-tok dance covers and what not.
And the current version of this tune is rearranged by 1974 AD's guitarist Manoj Kumar KC in a vocal sharing all-star collaboration featuring some technically fluent guitar maestros on solo and Manzil Bikram KC from Studio M on audio works.
This trend of many singers singing along to a same track, splitting lyrics containing deep meaningful message for social awareness isn’t as popular these days like in the past.
Especially around the 2006-07 when the country was going through the People's Movement (Jana Andolan) against the monarchy such various celebrity collaborations were a hip medium to publish songs in the mainstream television oriented Nepali music industry.
And amidst this current global pandemic, the out-growing corruption of our leaders, border invasion, the mismanaged and unimaginable conditions for returning migrants living in quarantine, the rising youth movement against the incompetence of the government in dealing with the corona crisis and government's response to their youth all cluster-up and form this disguised nationalist feeling many never imagined having and thus connect to the song even more with joy, love, mutual respect and appreciation.
The featured artists in this rendition of Rato Ra Chandra Surya, in order of appearance are Manoj Kumar KC, Manose Singh, Kiran Nepali, Samriddhi Rai, Raju Lama, Kengal Meher Shrestha, Bartika Eam Rai, Rohit John Chetrri, Sabin Rai, Diwas Gurung, Swapnil Sharma, Sushant KC, Sunny Manandhar, Sarun Tamrakar, Sunny Tuladhar, Deepak Moktan, Avishek KC, Sarad Shrestha, Prakash Rasaily, Rohit Shakya, Abhishek S. Mishra, Srijan Malla, Phiroj Shyangden and Ishan Onta. Released on 10th June 2020, the song has already crossed thirty-five thousand views on YouTube and gathered immense admiration from Nepalese music lovers living inside the country and abroad.
The video editing and color correction were handled by Rakshak Bhushan Bajracharya, motion graphics by Animesh Shrestha (A'max), Kushal Man Singh (Shadowmunky) and Proxima Studios, produced by Asish Syangden and presented by Revolution TV.